What Dreher is dancing around here is a humbler, more local, more contained, less frantic, less ambitious, simpler way of life. Can that be described ideologically? Not if you just tell stories about it, it can’t, not really. Those stories can work on people affectively and imaginatively, and by doing so might persuade them to see the value in such. But of course, not everyone will be moved by the stories, and thus won’t be able to see why Dreher speaks of “trade-offs.” Isn’t it, in the end, just another manifestation of individualistic, consumer choice? So first Dreher rejected his hometown, because he preferred something different than what his hometown offered; then later he went back to it to stay, because at that point in his life he preferred that which his hometown offered. (I owe this observation to David Watkins of the blog Lawyers, Guns & Money.) Dreher–and those of us who are in agreement with his communitarian sensibilities–will almost certainly what to challenge this formulation: after all, isn’t the entire point of embracing stability and putting down roots and learning to live within limits exactly to deny that we our entirely a product of our own preference maximization? Yes, says I! But if I want to say that “yes,” then I have to move beyond stories–I have to give an argument as to why the trade-offs which we face are (sometimes, anyway) bad ones, with one choice–the simpler, more local, more rural one–being obviously better. Why. Maybe because it connects us with deeper virtues, or maybe because it is more environmentally sustainable, or maybe because it better reflects our basic anthropology of being, or maybe all of the above, or maybe some other reason entirely? Whatever argument I make, it will be just that–an argument, a normative claim. And that means that I will have to be saying something that can be expressed theoretically, or ideologically.

Well, yeah, I get that, but that’s not the kind of book I wanted to write here, and besides, I’m not the one to do a book telling people what they ought to do, at least not credibly. Let me explain what I mean.

In 2006, I wrote a popular (= aimed at a mass audience) book called Crunchy Cons. It was an undertheorized book by design. My editor turned down a chapter on traditionalist conservatism’s thinkers — a Theory chapter — because she wanted it to be a book of storytelling. In other words, she wanted to go light on the theory, and instead focus on telling the stories of people who were living out these ideas. This is easier for the popular audience to deal with than theory.

I didn’t like this idea so much, because I love reading theoretical things, and so do most of my friends. And sure enough, I took some grief from academic friends for the book being so light. Yet I also received e-mails from people who weren’t academics at all — I’m thinking of the homeschooling mom in a Texas trailer park who wrote, but there were many others — but who really related to the ideas they found in the book, at a level they could deal with. Crunchy Cons was a kind of gateway drug to Russell Kirk, Wendell Berry, and others who have written about its themes in far more depth and with far more wisdom.

Little Way was always conceived as nothing more than a story. It’s a story that serves as a sequel to Crunchy Cons, in that it shows that I finally quit dwelling so much in the realm of theory, and actually lived up to my own ideas and intuitions. But it’s not a book about theory, because, to quote a line I use in the book, life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived. That might be an excuse for a failure to do the intellectual heavy lifting that Russell wants me to do, but to be honest, I’m tired of thinking about these things. Let me be clear what I mean: I’m tired of trying to react to the things in front of me by trying to shove it all into a theoretical framework, and draw the Lessons From Experience. I’m not saying this can’t or shouldn’t be done; I’m saying that it’s clear from the narrative that I’ve spent all my life as a restless seeker, and as someone who struggles to force himself to stop analyzing and mediating, and instead simply to be present and accepting. My sister was exactly the opposite — too much so, I believe — but still, I need to learn from her.

I’m still learning from her. Little Way was a book written in grief and confusion. I started writing it only four months after her death in 2011. Six months later, it was finished. A close friend told me he didn’t like the fact that I was writing it so quickly, with so many things yet to figure out about my relationship with Ruthie, my relationship with my family, my relationship to this place, and my past. He was right. But that was my assignment. The reader of Little Way walks with me through a lot of that. The most honest thing I could do was write about these things as I was experiencing them, and share ambiguity when I had ambiguity. In the book, I write about the painful things that happened in my childhood to alienate me profoundly from this place — specifically, the high school bullying, and my father’s inability to relate to a son who was so temperamentally and intellectually different from himself (an intolerant trait shared by my sister)– and how Ruthie’s experience healed a lot of that. But it didn’t heal it all, as I relate. I still struggle with this, but I struggle with it now from my hometown, not from far away.

I don’t feel entitled to tell people what they should do. What about people whose hometowns are big cities? Am I really going to tell people that they should move away from their families in the city to live among strangers in a small town? What about people who can’t find a job in a small town? I am acutely aware that I am living with rare privilege, having a job I can do from home, with an Internet connection. Without this, there would have been no moving home for me. I have a wife and three kids to support, and there aren’t a lot of jobs around here. In a time of high unemployment and job insecurity, I’m going to get on my high horse and lecture people to quit their jobs and move to, or back to, a small town? Really?

I’m not going to do that, because I can’t do that in good conscience. Is it a lack of conviction? I don’t think so. What I lack is the conviction that I know what’s best for everybody else.

Last week, driving to the funeral in north Louisiana, I passed through some poor and desperate looking small towns. I wondered how my choice would have been different had St. Francisville, my hometown, not been a good place. It really is a beautiful town — not a wealthy one, but very nice and friendly — but what if it were a place of economic depression, or high crime, or unhealthy conditions? A dear friend comes from an industrial town in Texas, and would never move back there, because it’s so unhealthy and ugly and miserable. Who am I to tell him that he ought to leave the meaningful work he does (he considers it not only his job, but his vocation), and move away from a part of the country that he loves, and where his adult children live, to do that?

In Little Way, I tell the story of Shannon Nixon, a girl from a very poor and broken family who got out and made a personally and professionally successful, stable life for herself far from our hometown. I asked her if she would ever think of coming home, and she said no, that that would be impossible. Three of her brothers are in prison, she told me, and besides, she got nothing but grief from her family for trying to better herself. Is it really my place, coming from what, despite its flaws (and all families have them), is a loving and nurturing family, to tell other people that they have a duty to return to a place of pain, abuse, and seemingly unmendable brokenness? I don’t believe it is.

Furthermore, I have been very sure of myself in the past. I was happy to lecture people on the importance of going to war in Iraq. I was pleased to proclaim the superiority of Catholic Christianity. Reality knocked the confidence out of me, and robbed me of my credibility. I believe in right and wrong, but I don’t have nearly as much faith as I once did on my ability to discern it. Ruthie and my dad both knew what was right for me, and their blind confidence in their own judgment, and refusal to acknowledge that I might see things more clearly than they, did a lot to keep me from taking seriously the possibility of moving home. In Little Way, I write about how this was a down side to my sister’s strong faith and conviction; she never really thought that she might be wrong, at least when it came to me. For example, she was a public school teacher, and was deeply against homeschooling. I tried to talk with her about our older son’s special needs status, and why, given his particular situation, and the educational options available to us in Dallas at the time, homeschooling was the most sensible option. She refused to consider that we might be right. She knew better. She was like this about a lot of things with me.

This stubbornness was a fault of hers, and a fault of my dad’s. You could make all the arguments you wanted to to them about why you thought X or Y course of action was the wisest, and it wouldn’t do any good. It wasn’t so much that I wanted them to agree with me (though I did) as it was that I wanted them to at least consider my point of view, and why things weren’t nearly as black and white as they thought.

The point is, I don’t know always know what’s best for everybody. And how can any of us know for sure? As my father’s extraordinary confession at the end of Little Way reveals, even a man who confidently chose a path through life that he tried to press on his only son, with unhappy results, gets to the end of that life wondering if he had chosen rightly.

This is real life. It’s hard, it’s messy, and it’s uncertain. But that’s the life into which I’ve been thrown, and that most people have been thrown. It should be clear from the book that I don’t believe my sister had all the right answers, and I don’t believe I did either. Ruthie understood some things I didn’t, and more to the point, she lived them. The life she lived, and the fruits of that life in the people who loved her and served her, made the case for roots and stability in place to me more effectively than all the arguments I’d been reading. It didn’t change my mind; it changed my heart. That’s the power of story.

I get the need for theory, and critical thinking. I really do. But here in the middle of my life, I realize how little I know, and how difficult it is to compress the mysteries of life as people actually live it into ideological constructs. In my case, my strong tendency toward abstract intellectualizing has, perhaps ironically, often served more to obscure than to clarify. I’m on a learning curve. At this stage in my life, I need to think less and do more. I am happy to outsource the localist theorizing to real intellectuals. I don’t mean that in a snarky way. We are all part of a community. Russell, Damon Linker, and the FPR guys, are all genuine intellectuals, and as such, they have a greater insight than I do into the theoretical possibilities and contours of localism. I’m greatly inclined to listen to them and to learn from them, because I think along their lines. Their work is useful because, as Yuval Levin put it, political conservatism ought to seek the kind of social order in which it is possible for these little platoons, like the one that served Ruthie and her family, can thrive — and thrive in more places than only small towns.

For me personally, however, the greater wisdom is in trying to stop being so quick to draw ideological and theoretical lessons, and derive prescriptions, and rather to just learn to be internally quiet and watchful. At this point in the roundabout, stumblebum journey of my life, I need to pay more attention to observing Auden’s command, in the face of mortality: “You shall love your crooked neighbour/With your crooked heart.” Because I can’t stop writing any more than a fish can stop swimming, I’ll still be describing what I see and what I think it teaches me, and all of us. Draw your own conclusions from what I tell you. I’m going to tell you what I think is right, but you’ll be better off looking at the fruits of the life I actually live, rather than the life I live inside my head, and on the page.

UPDATE: I understand that Russell was mostly making a general point, and that I’m defending why I didn’t write an ideological book, but rather a memoir. It was more true to my experience and knowledge. I welcome those willing to do the ideological and political work on these questions. It’s important. It’s just not where my head or my heart is right now. Let me put it another way. The questions I keep thinking about are, Even though I know the theory, why did it take a story — that is, seeing what happened to my sister, and how the townspeople responded to it — to make me change my life? And what implications does that have for my writing going forward?

I don’t read FPR at all as often as I’d like or should, but that all seems like common sense to me.

As I move into a new stage of my own writing (I hope, and indeed am having trouble for this very reason), I know all about what can only be told through stories, rather than in the abstract, though in my case very different stories for very different reasons.

One question though: you implied this in the book, and you implied it again here, that you only began homeschooling Matthew because of his special needs, and not so much out of home schooling in principle. In Crunchy Cons, you definitely argue it as a matter of principle. Of course, I would hardly suggest you should have gone into Matthew’s issues in Crunchy Cons, but would you mind clarifying? Was it more out of principle, and you just said that to avoid a drawn-out argument with Ruthie? My sincere apologies if this is too personal a question, and if I shouldn’t ask it in a public forum.

To conclude on a broader point, even in Crunchy Cons I felt a deep affinity for your attitudes about life, and approach to writing about it and sharing with the reading public. Whether its more a reflection of me personally and my particular reasons for relating than a general observation I couldn’t say, but I do think that’s something I’ve found in your work I haven’t anywhere else.

Thanks for writing this, Rod–it’s thoughtful and wise, and it puts me in my place: both in the sense of reminding me (as someone who, as you were for a long time, tends to over-intellectualize everything) that theory and ideology must not take of lived practice, and in the sense of emphasizing that the two types of thinking have their own legitimate and important place, one after another. Your writing has long been an inspiration to me, and with this book (and the arguments it has given rise to), it has only become more so.

[Note from Rod: Oh, Russell, I hope it didn't come off as "putting you in your place." I didn't mean for it to, and I apologize if it sounded defensive. I seriously recognize the value of theory, and mean it when I say that Ruthie could have used more reflection and contemplation, versus action. But I know myself by now well enough to know what a trip abstraction and theorizing is for me, and wanted to write a response that both recognized the legitimacy of your point, but also concede that I personally need more balance in my own approach. That, plus the fact that I know too many people whose situations are complicated, and don't lend themselves to easy application of theory. As I indicated in this post, it wasn't that Ruthie lacked for theory about the way I ought to be living my life; it was that she wouldn't have been able to articulate it like an intellectual would. But the remorseless application of it, or attempt to apply it, to her brother's life, with no thought about his particular circumstances, was in part responsible for the friction that existed between us. Anyway, I respect the theorizing you and your colleagues do, and am grateful that we are all laborers together in the vineyard. -- RD]

It reminded me of a review of one of my books where the reviewer took me to task for not provided reams of statistics to prove my techniques. I responded to her that while I had a number of purposes in writing the book, boring my readers to death was not one of them.

In any event, I have reached a point in my life where I operate under the assumption that academic theorizing is not worth its weight in used toilet paper and storytelling is something that such theorizing is not and cannot be-persuasive.

Rod, it’s good to hear you acknowledge how difficult it is for the great majority of people to find a good-paying job which lets them work online wherever they choose to be. I had that for a bit over a year, but only as a very unusual accommodation from an employer, and may never find it again in my field. If I could work online, we sure as Hell wouldn’t be in Los Angeles, and I surely wouldn’t have lived in several of the cities I’ve lived in.

I’m glad you wrote Crunchy Cons the way you did, and I believe that The Little Way is also best as it stands.

One of the problems I see in our society is the need for many people to Have All The Answers.

It’s sad, because not only is it a futile pursuit – we are told in scripture that we won’t have all the answers – but also because we use it as a way to Be Right – and again we are told in scripture that we are inherently not. And, we use it as a way to differentiate and separate ourselves from others who do not have all the same answers as we do. Following closely this comes the impulse, even the demand, for more separation between ourselves and others. That is a good example of societal breakdown right there.

Theory is all well and good, but once we start trying to stuff everything into a framework so that we can know and label all and put everything in its place – and put others in their place – then we have lost our way. As you say, we should be living the mystery. Hopefully, together.

I am a social scientist. I create and refine theory for a living, and believe in the usefulness of good theory. As Kurt Lewin once said, “There is nothing so practical as a good theory.” And yet a theory is an abstraction of reality that is designed to help explain and predict.

Theory, however, is sterile, and does not offer much in the way of contextualization. Theory engages the head, but not the heart – and both are necessary.

There is a reason why Jesus told parables and MLK did not present a 5-point plan to racial justice on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

That last question: “Even though I know the theory, why did it take a story — that is, seeing what happened to my sister, and how the townspeople responded to it — to make me change my life?” is a doozy. I love that question, and believe it is at the very center of the human experience.

It speaks volumes about how we learn and how we change. As a professional counselor, it is among the most important things to keep in mind- argument very rarely results in behavior change. Story, metaphor and experience often do.

I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t read it, but the last chapter feels like a coda you didn’t expect to have, where you tie up a lot of issues regarding your family– past, present and future. It’s where you hit pay dirt that explains a lot of things. Did you anticipate that from the beginning, or were you still living the last part of the story while writing the beginning?

[Note from Rod: No, I didn't anticipate it at all. The book was almost entirely written when I took Hannah to Paris. I anticipated that that would be a sweet coda to the story, somehow. But it turned out to be not that at all, as you know. That's how life is. I think that it made the book much stronger, actually, but it was NOT pleasant to live through, at all. -- RD[

I’m someone in an academic career (who came to academia by way of law and writing). Just purchased and started reading The Little Way of Ruthie Leming. So far, I’m totally loving it. But not very far in.

I’m one academic who’s very tired and bored by having to theorize about everything. Sorry.

Brutally honest here. I saw a post somewhere that talks about the presidential election 0f 2024. It was against D- Texas governor Julian Castro, R-senator Margaret Hoover, Libertarian- senator Rand Paul, and Constitutional -governor of Louisiana Rod Dreher.
You need to stick to this more heart and less head approach-ESPECIALLY IN THE AREA OF RELIGION. I’ve seen posts recently where you have done this. “Jesus Loves Duck Hunters, “St. Jimmy Of Nat Street”, “How Ordinary People Live Their Lives, “Here is a Man of God” , “The Power of Stories”, “How Not to Lose Your Faith”, and ESPECIALLY “Religion in Ruthie Lemming”.
This was not always true in the past, and you still strain at times. I use your posts at the time of Christopher Hitchens only as an example. To you death bed conversion is a heart issue, but it’s truly just large “O”. I think I’m saying that stories have to be heart issues for the larger group.
My grandfather and cronies sat at table after meal and argued religion and politics. Nothing gets to us all more. Nothing gets people more fired up on blogs. But this ain’t 1950. We all sense that polarizing is in need of being over. It’s a plural world. And the more people we run into who are way different than us, the more we realize we’re all in this together. East/west, believer/non-believer, homosexual.heterosexual, O/o, rural/urban, conservative/progressive, conservationist/preservationist. We need stories that lead us all. My grandfather, in an age of largely homogenous culture, never considered those that were being oppressed.
I think it’s obvious that the Constitution Party in the USA is in need of major new blood and heart( and thinking). Louisiana seems to me to be a perfectly great place to start. Your Democrats and Republicans are largely out of their minds. Basically the Constitution Party is about the survival of conservatism, not about sustaining a culture war. I don’t think conservatism is all- you have to be pro-life, anti LBGT, anti-immigration, anti government, etc. If it was more like the moderate party in Switzerland, it would achieve great results for any community. They emphasize tax reductions, deregulation of private enterprise, and privatization of schools and hospitals. We could use that everywhere. They were at our peoples hearts as much in 1776 as they are in 2026( exactly 250 years). I’m betting those three would lift Louisiana to the surprise and envy of the other 49.
Dreher for governor in 2016. President in 2026.
P.S. I’m a big fan of Margaret Hoover…….if the Republicans had listened to her in 2008 and 2012, they would have been way better off.

So, it really is all a matter of choice? With only a “story” to back it up. Fine. But other people make other choices, and have other stories. You yourself say so.

That being the case, what is the larger point? It would be one thing if you simply wanted to tell the story of your sister, her life and her death. It would be one thing if you were simply saying that, witnessing that, that seeing that “story,” going home was right for you.

But, over and over again, in other posts, that is NOT what you are saying. You are, at the very least, strongly implying that there is some overarching reason, some “theory,” some not merely personal, not merely anecdotal, not merely “story” related reason to prefer home town, small town living.

To me, personally, even the former rings not quite true. Your first person experience doesn’t really make sense to me. But you have done almost nothing viz a viz the latter, which the reviewer quite properly points out. And just saying, “Well go check out Kirk and Berry” hardly cuts it. We can check them out without your say so, or your story.

Finally, relating to the “story” and first person account itself ( and perhaps this is somewhat hurtful, but, I believe that, having made all of this public record, it is fair game….), your sister, to me, sounds exactly like the embodiment of small town, narrow minded, parochial, provincial, unjustified self satisfaction and certainty. Everything new to her, everything that was not part of her experience, was wrong. Home schooling? Wrong. You wanting to go off and make your way in the world? Wrong. She not only never changed her mind, but her mind was closed from jump street, and she would not even respond to reason, much less be swayed by it. Sorry, but that is not in the least a good thing, nor is it an accident that she, and your dad, both felt this way and both were small town and proud of it.

Indeed, your sister went further than that, again according to what you yourself have put on the public record. According to you, you and your wife cooked a bouillabaisse for the whole family, but your sister refused to even try it. That is not only closed minded, but it is childish and outright rude. And rude not only to you, but to your wife. And disrespectful too. And, she wouldn’t even let it go at that, but added to her bad manners/unwarranted hostility by going out of her way to compliment some other person’s “country” style, simple cooking.

Why anyone would want to model them self on this person is beyond me. Why would her “way’ be seen as admirable?Yes, she had good points, but all people have good points and bad points. So that doesn’t answer the question. Yes, the story of the town pulling together for her is touching, but is it really unusual when it comes to long term teachers in a small town? And, in any event, how does it negate the bad points personal to her that you, as opposed to the townpeople, know first hand?

You yourself admit that you tend to go from one certainty to another. That what you believed yesterday is not what you believe today. No matter how vehement you were then. I wonder if, x number of years from now, all of this doesn’t follow suit. You felt for your dying sister, the response of the town was moving, and you felt some guilt too. So, you changed your life 180 and did what she always wanted you to do. But was that really wise?

[Note from Rod: Did you actually read the book? I don't think you did. The whole point of the book is the paradox of life: that all the things that made me run from this town are the same things that made me want to come back; that the light of suffering and mortality did not obviate the bad things, but put them in a certain perspective. Of course my sister was small-minded and parochial and downright nasty at times to me. She was also heroically brave, and patient, and kind, and self-sacrificing to her students -- people I couldn't have been bothered to give the time of day. Both things are true. Besides, Ruthie's views and my Dad's views on things are not the only way people are in my town.

The larger point is the need for family and community, and the brokenness in all of us -- I was really a jerk to my sister when we were kids -- that gets in the way of that. "Little Way" is not a book that offers a formula for how to live your life. It's a story about real people. The ultimate paradox of this story, perhaps, is that if my sister were still alive, I couldn't have moved home, because I wouldn't have been able to live with her judgmentalism about me. This didn't make her a bad person; it just made her human. Same as me. Same, believe it or not, as you. I am grateful that the gift she bequeathed to me as her inheritance was the inner healing that enabled me to find my way home. If you can't deal with that, I'm sorry, but I've done about all I can do to help you. -- RD]

If I understand the book correctly, it discovers something incompatible with what Russ is looking for- life as situations, as situational thinking. Successful situational thinking discovers the true identities and true names of the things before you in the here and now.

Situational thinking is wonderful in its own right as a mode of living/thinking- it’s very satisfying subjectively. But its prioritizing of the Here and Now and subjective individual perspective (and the lacking prior insight/recognition) does lack what analytical thinking provides, which is measure (aka perspective) relative to the world at large and objective historical frame. And, due to the thrill of new positive discernment, a habit forms of neglect of discernment of truth via full review and process of elimination of possible truths.

On the whole the book seems of (or very close to) the genre called Heimatroman in German. Let’s just say the extracting of ideology from Heimatromane has previously not led to desirable results. And a review of why suggests that the present rough equivalent ‘localism’ is probably best kept a literary trope and hobbyhorse, kept alive online by humanities intellectuals with too much time on their hands and desires to write Heimatromane.http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimatroman

(You can put it through Google Translate though it is written in prestige academic German and thus largely in passive voice. GT misrenders “Aufnahme” as “recording” the Stranger/Returnee at the very end of the piece; meant is “taking in” i.e. social (re)acceptance.)

But Rod, if Ruthie was merely a mix of good and bad, as most, if not all, people are, then why is her “way” to be valorized? Why is she said to be the key to the “good life?” If her life is indicative (even if not the whole story) of small town, home town life, which I take it you think it is, then what is so great about that life?

Then too, I wonder, even if small mindedness and parochiality are to be excused, why it is somehow OK to be so wonderful to your schoolchildren, but “nasty” to your brother and your sister in law. OK, you were a jerk to her in childhood. The two of y’all had childhood issues. But why be mean and petty and rude to your husband’s wife?

And, again, not to be mean or dismissive, but plenty of people are brave in the face of illness. In my experience, when it comes to really serious, life threatening or even terminal illness, most people are actually pretty brave. How does that showing that courage, which plenty of folks in all walks of life, no matter where they live, whether they are religious or not, do prove (or disprove, for that matter) that the life Ruthie lived was a model one?

You say you have found “inner healing,” but I can’t help but think, given your prior history, that this is simply the latest phase.

But, I guess what has really got my goat is that you seem to want it both ways. On the one hand, the whole thing is just a story. It is an experience that you had that is very moving and touching, but has no greater meaning, certainly no social or cultural one. On the other hand, you are going on, in post after post, testifying to the superiority of home town, small town life generally. Sure, some folks maybe can’t, because of finances or other reasons, experience it, but it is clearly the “way,” “the good life,” in your book. Which is it? Is it just your and Ruthie’s story, or is it a blueprint for society?

The thing is, I grew up in a small town too. And had the alleged “virtues” of small towns and rural areas shoved down my throat for as long as I can remember. My experience is that almost none of it is true. Small towns have some plusses and some minuses, but for me, the minuses vastly outweigh the plusses. And I am not looking for “spiritual healing” or “help” to reverse that judgment, one which, by the way, I have held all my life. But I can agree to disagree with you, if you actually stuck to the “we each have our own life to live and must find our own path” approach. It’s when you mix in the “what Rod now thinks is good for him, and his wife and kids, is good for most everyone” approach that it cheezes me off.

[Note from Rod: Ah, I knew there was something personal in this. I've found that whenever people have a strong negative reaction to the story, and ignore what is plainly there, or what I try to tell them is there, there is usually some traumatic event related to their family or the place in which they grew up, and they feel as if I'm trying to delegitimate their experience. Listen, you don't have to explain to me how nasty small-town life can be. What you will not get from me, though, is a validation of your belief that small-town life, and small-town people, are always and everywhere small-minded. You will not find in my book a defense of my sister's indefensible behavior towards me and my wife in the bouillabaisse incident. She had a serious flaw, and she hurt me. But I hurt her in my ways as well. Neither of us is innocent. You seem to think that that incident, and the chip she had on her shoulder about my leaving, negates all the incredible good she did, and the amazing courage she had, and that she showed. In fact, judging by your comments, you seem to require that no amount of good shown by a small-town person, or the people of a small town, can ever reverse the judgment you have made about them, based on seeing them at their worst.

I don't know what you personally suffered, of course, so I'm not going to tell you that you need to find some kind of healing or reconciliation with your family or your town. But I do find it interesting that you cannot seem to bear to hear that there is any such thing as redemption, or that you could be expected to show mercy, even as you are shown mercy. Think about that.

As I have written it, the "little way" of Ruthie Leming amounts to seeking to live a life of humility, gratitude, and generosity, seeking to be faithful in small things, and to be a part of the community. Was Ruthie perfect? Not at all, as her best friend Abby freely testified. But she was extraordinarily good, even holy -- and I testify to that even as I was, as far as I know, the only person in the world to whom she was unjust and unkind. People are complicated. Life is complicated. The "blueprint for society" here is to be humble, sacrificing, generous, patient, loving, faithful, and above all grateful, and to do all this within a community. Love your family, if you can, and work to abide in love and work through your problems, giving grace and receiving it. You can do this, or a lot of it, right there in Philadelphia. If you can't, or won't, why not? Don't answer me; but ask yourself. I do not wish to make this an ad hominem argument, but I intuit that your objection is not really about me and my story at all, but because this story makes you confront difficult emotions within yourself. This happens a fair amount with this book, I find. -- RD]

Two colleagues and I spent a lot of time over the past three weeks getting ready for a presentation. I thought we had done a good job of balancing theory and practice.

While our presentation was well received, it was pretty clear that the audience was more interested in the practice side — the stories and photos — that we used to illustrate the theoretical stuff than they were interested in the theoretical stuff.

You’d think from all the sermons that I sat through, I would have learned that lesson long ago.

Your post helped me clarify something that’s bothered me for years- the assumed superiority of theory over messy practice. I first noticed it in academia, where physics (as the most mathematical/theoretical) of the sciences was seen as superior to mere chemistry and biology. And in the aping of science by the humanities. But in recent months I’ve started to see this in the way we value orthodoxy over orthopraxy in the church as well. I’ve been struck by some of the evangelical reviews of Rachel Held Evans’ Year of Biblical Womenhood (in which she decides that she needs to appreciate her husband more, embrace motherhood and enjoying the domestic arts) which criticize her for not using a consistent hermeneutic. In other words, it’s not enough to come up with a decision on how to live your life better, you have to do it for the right reasons.

You put your finger on the claim to power that theory represents. I think that’s why it’s so seductive- it makes our world controllable (and if we’re lucky other people as well). Just follow the formula.

As a scientist who works on how physics shapes ecosystems, I know that theory *is* powerful and useful. It’s just not complete.

I would like to say that the solution of problems is still important. The most powerful part of the book for me was the way you come to a realization of your own culpability in your estrangement from your sister, and your attempt to break the pattern in the next generation.

This polemic reminds me of the Luddites. And a line from a British writer whose name I’ve forgotten — someone here will know it — lamenting that industrial production and urbanization have cut humanity off from the natural cycle of seasons, day and night… which has some merit. When the Luddites smashed a factory, they never missed the chance to destroy the clocks. Living life by the clock was what people used to the majority of the population living a rural life closely connected to the land hated most.

There are many advantages to modern technology. I’m not a back-to-the-land person. I like being able to put screens between me and the mosquitoes. I’ve noticed that landscapes look a lot better out of a living room window than they do up close in the mud. And late in life, I’ve contracted some inconvenient allergies.

But somehow, we need to be able to produce in a cost-effective way without using ourselves up doing so. It all comes back to, the market was made for man, not man for the market. Sometimes you can find that in a small town. But sometimes you don’t.

This stubbornness was a fault of hers, and a fault of my dad’s. You could make all the arguments you wanted to to them about why you thought X or Y course of action was the wisest, and it wouldn’t do any good. It wasn’t so much that I wanted them to agree with me (though I did) as it was that I wanted them to at least consider my point of view, and why things weren’t nearly as black and white as they thought.

I read your blog through an RSS reader, so I read this post just a few minutes after reading the post on philosophy, your Existentialism class, and the Amazon review by Jon Cogburn. And I know you’re a fan of Alasdair MacIntyre.

One of the deep differences between MacIntyre and Burke is that MacIntyre thinks traditions cannot remained fixed or static. Traditions must develop and grow — must make progress towards truth — and among other things this means confronting the challenges posed by rival traditions. For example, since the nineteenth century traditional theism must confront the challenge posed by secular humanism, not in the sense that one must conclusively vanquish the other but in the sense that each can only recognize its limitations and oversimplifications by listening to the other.

A tradition that remains stubborn and refuses to listen to its rivals can still be lived, but it becomes moribund and stagnant. This doesn’t mean everyone in the community must be a philosopher. But it does mean philosophy needs to have a certain kind of place in the community.

Finally, we don’t need to contrast doing philosophy with telling stories. Sharing stories across traditions, and then discussing the differences, can be one way of doing philosophy.

Ruthie was a be-live person. And the line that resonated most with me appears near the end when talking about our inner athiest: “I’ve also noticed that he gets quiet during stories” (22).

Sometimes a story like Ruthie’s is needed to calm the internal arguments we carry on. And I think reading your book make it abundantly clear that you are not being prescriptive. Not everyone can or should have a life that looks like Ruthie’s, but everyone can learn something about the good life from reading the whole story.

I’m coming to realize over time how story cuts to the heart while theory allows us to hold things at a distance and examine them. Both are critically important, but if you had written this book to include all the theory, I don’t think you would have nearly as many people affected by it in the ways that really matter. People would not be taking steps to reconcile with family and friends because they would be able to keep distancing themselves from it.

My personal experience of the theory-practice conflict includes the discovery of a personal flaw: I will emphasize theory and allow it (deliberatley use it!) to bulldoze over the validations we will always find in practice. My cubicle wall has had on it, through two careers and over 30 years of time, this gem from Yogi Berra:

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, their different.

I need that constant reminder. I need my eyes freed from the blinders of theory. You will see me chastise people in threads here over using theory to ignore practice, and you will rarely (as this time) see me qualify that with my movtiation: I’ve spent a lifetime missing opportunities and denigrating value practice brings to our lives. Theory is best when it is a starting point. It is most dangerous when it is the destination.